The Brooklyn-based folk duo Robinson & Rohe will be performing at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 30 at Hungry Monk Music in West Ashley. The two have known each other for more than a decade, developing a friendship as they pursued their separate careers — spanning everything from playing Brazilian jazz gigs to composing orchestral scores. Over those years, the two grew into powerhouse performers in their own right.
Liam Robinson honed his wide-ranging skills as an original cast member of the Tony Award winning play “Warhorse,” as musical director of Anaïs Mitchell’s Off-Broadway folk opera “Hadestown,” as a composer in the Red Light New Music collective, and as a member of the Becca Stevens Band.
Meanwhile, Jean Rohe began touring and recording with her band, Jean Rohe & the End of the World Show, honing a honeyed, far-ranging voice and collecting accolades along the way. The New York Times called her “a sure-footed young singer-songwriter.” Rohe also garnered attention for her unflinching alternative anthem for the United States, “National Anthem: Arise! Arise!” which continues to be performed and recorded by choirs and bands across the country, and was published in the Rise Up Singing songbook sequel.
Despite long days and separately flourishing careers, the two found themselves with a musical itch they hadn’t yet scratched. One afternoon, they sat at Robinson’s kitchen table, swapping harmonies as they sang some of the old folk songs both of them had grown up with. At the end of one song, says Rohe, “we both sat there in silence.” Stripped down to their two voices, they could hear the potential for something big: “It’s a magical thing to phrase with someone like that,” says Robinson, “to breathe together and land language in time, in tune, even pushing and pulling tempo together.”
They started exchanging lyrics and music — Robinson taking a fragment of writing from Rohe and delivering it back to her married to a melody. The collaborative process was the start of what would become their debut record, Hunger. It was also the start of their love story.
Robinson recalls writing a love song about Rohe early on in their relationship. He knew it didn’t belong on any other instrument but the banjo. The only problem was that he wasn’t a proficient enough banjo player for the music he had written. For him, the solution was simple: “I had to learn how to play it for those songs,” he says. “It took a while.” Rohe echoes this drive to deliver whatever the songs demanded of them, saying that over the past few years, her guitar-playing has entered a new realm: “It all came from this necessity of expressing these songs the way they need to be expressed.”
All that love and labor resonates throughout the music of Robinson & Rohe, whose songs are filled with beautiful harmonies accompanied by guitars, banjo, and accordion.
Hunger is a record full of songs about love and land — often both at the same time. The tight title track explores the drive to consume and create at the root of some of humanity’s greatest accomplishments and atrocities, all while charting the story of a love affair from youthful meeting to the parting of death: “And we wondered if our love would endure the certain pain/And if this land could withstand the endless strain of our hunger.”
The detailed arrangements of the song come through with an urgency—in part a testament to the way it was produced. Over four days, Robinson and Rohe recorded the entire record in a single room at a studio space in an old house up in the Catskills. This unadulterated sound comes through with a richness that is earthy and immediate rather than over-handled.
Robinson & Rohe will perform Saturday Sept. 30 at 8 p.m. at Hungry Monk Music, located at 1948 Belgrade Ave. Tickets: $10 general / $5 students under 16 at the door. For more information, call 571-3857 or visit www.hungrymonkmusic.com.
